Salmon

We were out at Westport today; we had a great time. This wasn't the
biggest fish Jeff caught, but it was a good one. I only caught one-
and of had to be hand reeled in once it got wound up in the rudder.
Sarah let me reel in one of hers- my hands were so sore afterwards!
Dad hand reeled in one of his himself. That was crazy. We all just
kept getting tangled at the start. Jeff caught the first and one of
the biggest fish. Unfortunately, we didn't make it back in time to get
weighed in the derby. But our boat limited- even the deck hand and
captain each got one!
It was pretty gray out there, but generally warm. We missed seattle's
90 degrees- that's okay with me.

Westport view

On our way to fishing tomorrow!

Game Night!

>>>> Always a fun time. This was an evening at Sarah's house. Next
>>>> game night is July 13 at my house.
>>>>
>>

NYC Kittehs

u nawt livin in a boks cuz of catnip adikshun?

picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption:

i'm addicted... this is fun

This is created from all the text on my blog so far. 
On this wordle site, you can paste in any text you want, 
and it creates this "word cloud." 

It's fun

what do I talk about a lot?

The swing is up!

www.soundyearbooks.com

I'm finally spending some time figuring out web design. Check out www.soundyearbooks.com

It's not so great, but I'm learning. :)

camp

things are really moving on yearbook camp. We had a great meeting today, went over the schedule in detail. It was so helpful to get feedback and input on it!! Duh, right? I should always be working collaboratively on it.

I also did a ton of invoices this afternoon, which I can now put in the mail straight away. I will be on top of it this year. No waiting until May to see what is missing.

Camp should be fun, I think. I'm looking forward to it now.

review of the trip

Colorado

We are heading back from our lovely trip. Jeff's family is super nice.
The family picnic/barbecue on Sunday was awesome. Jeff's grandpa is a
lot like Grandpa Byrle, with some Grandma Pat humor and sarcasm built
in.
It was fun to meet his college friends, too- one night with all the
married couples (four of them) and one with the single guys. ;) they
have funny stories about college and silky things they did. Jeff had
more of a traditional college experience. NYU is definitely different.
We made a two hour trip up into the mountains, up to Trail Ridge, at
12,000 feet. Pretty dang high! We stopped at one view point, it said
the parking are was 500 feet from the observation area. I think it was
the thin air that had me breathing a bit hard on the walk back.

Another highlight was going through Jeff's memento stuff that his mom
has stored away. Yearbooks, report cards, toys, class pictures... I
took his senior year portrait. I can think of some good places to
display that. He was a super cute kindergartener, had a spiky hair cut
from 3rd to 6th. And was a golfer all through high school. Never in
the yearbook in more than his mug shot and golf group pic. It reminds
me how important it is for my yearbookers to feature kids who won't be
in the book otherwise. So their girlfriend in ten years has something
entertaining to read.

I also got to see all his photo albums (very organized! Way more than
my family). Lots of family vacations, some camping and some funny baby
in the bath pix.

Outside of Estes

Thinking of Anne and alex

In Fort Collins

for Spartaaaaaa!

info tech

Talked all day about digital television, broadband access and public access channels. My first thoughts to bring back to the city...
We should have an RSS feed for our homepage. Chris adds news release type info, listings about the rec guide, and it'd be cool to have that link. We could have a link for email sign-ups there, too.
When we finally do web streaming of our meetings, it might be interesting to partner with the high school. I know we'll end up doing the cheaper version this year at old city hall, where staff will need to do the actual videotaping. Why not ask VISCOM at Kamiak if they want to volunteer occasionally to run the camera? Maybe they could get extra credit, it would free up our staff, and it would be fun to include them. I wouldn't want to depend on volunteer staffing of the camera, but seems like a way to create a small opportunity/connection.

Digital television talk made me excited to potentially get rid of cable. I know, I know, I'm totally addicted to DVR-- but not necessarily my cable system. If the digital signal means you're getting additional channels (multicasting, where one channel transmits channel 7, but also 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, etc), and if I can figure out either AppleTV or some other way to get specific shows, maybe it could work. I guess I knew, but didn't think about, how the digital converter box will turn the over the air signal into a channel just as clear as any cable box will. AppleTv is $229 or $329. As long as I could download all the foodnetwork and TLC shows, and Home and Garden, and some car racing for Jeff.... Well, maybe I'm not quite ready.

So, for the city-- I need to work on an article for the newsletter about the key message being that you don't need to buy a new tv, you just need a converter, that the digital signal is broadcast now, and that it might be a way to cut out the cable bill. It's timely enough.

PEG channels, I'm mostly pinning my hopes on the new city hall and expanding our usage then. Our current-- non-existent-- offerings are quite pitiful. The stupid thing is that by the time we get a public access channel it'll be outmoded and dead. We'll have been relegated to channel 900 something and we may as well just YouTube everything.

Sunny blue skies!

Five minute walk from my hotel room

Mountains

Thats in the distance of the iPhone glare correction.
Had a fantastic dinner, and also figured out that the bar next door to
the hotel has trivia! Its only 8:30... I should be able to relax and
make it back out for a bit. Or I may just read and do email, that is
tempting.

Sightseeing outside of Greeley

We've checked out the old family farm, the current corn crop, all the
schools that Jeff went to and had lunch at Farmers Mexican. Yum! We
need one of those in Mukilteo.

re-elect gregoire

Mom and Dad made a valiant effort to post a few campaign signs today and some other residents chose to disrespect their right to free speech. It was quite unfortunate. I was proud of them, though-- they had about ten signs up for a few hours in front of Kamiak, one angry republican tore them down and broke many of them, and an angry PTA mom took some down.
But, they were up for awhile, and they stood their ground, and provided a smile and a reminder to the many democratic parents and kids attending the event at Kamiak.

As Marko says, "Dino, Welcome to Gregoire Country!"

Gorge High Dam

This was a pretty good trip! We drove 50 miles east of our campground, to Lake Diablo and Gorge Lake on the way, stopped in Newhalem on the way back. Lots of Seattle City Light dams, nice little trails. We had our lunch at a picnic site on the way.
The weather was just right-- a few rain drops but mostly only when we were driving, and lots of sun. It was gorgeous.

weekend kabin

We are almost ready to head out for the weekend to Concrete, WA! Probably the rainiest June weekend we'll have, but that's why the cabin rental is good.

My car is packed to the brim-- that grill of mine is huge, the ice chest is huge... No guarantees how Anne and Alex will fit anything in the car. I've never been known as the best at car-packing. I figured I'd leave it as a work in progress because Anne will likely put her own mark on the endeavor.

The Jenny Plane

Its at Paine Field now, in Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection.
Many Americans learned to fly on it, apparently, around the 1920's. It
has a gorgeous propeller. Reminds me of the Annie boat. Where many
Gregersons' learned to fish.

yearbook camp

I'm looking forward to managing this better this year. It's been a tough transition, moving from the 300 some kids we used to have to the 140 or so we pull together now. 140 is still a good number, but the kind of flash that you can afford to do with the bigger camp needs to get trimmed down. And we have never really consciously done that trimming.

So, for 2007, Annette is saving our butt. Thank god. We're all cleared out for 2007. This year is a blank slate-- a cheap blank slate. It'll still be awesome, we just need to be deliberative about the money we spend. I wish I was more of a money person. I like to spend it, not budget it.

City hall looks beautiful!

I am so excited about our new building! It's funny, that corner of Cyrus actually is a pretty prominent location. It's not very connected to the north end of Mukilteo, but it's still a great site. It's exciting to see the walls go up for the office parts of it, and the "wedge" that goes between the chambers and the offices. The council chambers will start going up at some point, once Cyrus Way is all flattened out and fixed.

Testy Chef

I finally had a chance to try out the Testy Chef Cafe in Maple Valley yesterday. It was delightful. Great cheddar on the club sandwich, special that day. I didn't realize the building was right on the river. Small and cozy, and very quick service. Great red checkered tablecloths. No one seemed too testy the day that I visited.

obama

I watched his speech (from yesterday) tonight to get excited. I have been a Hillary supporter, and so I wanted to be able to feel good about the transfer of allegiance. He is an awesome and inspiring speaker. Communication is very important to me. It was also great to watch some highlights-- lowlights-- of McCain's speech and contrast that. Wow. It's like watching someone who's never held office before or stood in front of a crowd, who doesn't believe in what he's saying, and who looks O-L-D.

I believe Obama can win.

I can't wait to stay up late in November and watch it happen.

sustainability

Did you know that by 2040, only 22% of the houses in the US will have children in them? So we don't really need any more suburban traditional homes. We need housing choice and options. And walkable neighborhoods. And good pedestrian streetscapes.

next Japanese Gulch fundraiser

We are on for a happy hour at the Diamond Knot Brewery in Harbour Pointe. Friday the 27th, tentatively from 5pm to 8pm. Hopefully we will raise another few thousand for land acquisition in the gulch.

when a Rosehill discussion is good...

Council was pretty good tonight (I did have to leave early because of the aforementioned hives). We did more of an abstract analysis of priorities for the Rosehill siting. It's nice to take a step back and just talk concepts. Its hard when its an either/or site decision, and preconceived ideas of what's included start to cloud my opinion. Today was valuable. Part of the consensus was a big green space, open public park. that's good because that will just be nice, and it's useful for the festival and events that happen now. Any real constructed plaza may end up being closer to the building, tied more to connecting usage of space in the building with the outside.
Of course, everyone agreed on making the visual connections and preserving views of the waterfront. I think it may actually end up on the back SE corner. Wouldn't be such a bad thing. But I like hiding the parking more. Pedestrian streetscapes are important, I want the kind of close connection that the Lincoln courtyard has to connect to the community center site.

I wonder if we're off-base on the large greenspace. Jane Jacobs says people don't like and won't use big generic empty spaces. Maybe if we have different elements to break it up in ways....

allergies totally suck

don't ever get hives. You won't like it, trust me. They are pretty much gone now, thank goodness. YUCK

next food network star

is awesome. I am a sucker for lots of competitive reality tv, and this one is fun. I didn't like the winner of the last one (her show is annoying, all about cooking food with low-fat type replacements for ingredients. Yogurt for cream cheese... give me cream cheese any day).

so, The Next Food Network Star just started last night. Plenty of people look pretty incompetent. But they automatically were talking while they were cooking, even though that wasn't the competition. It's just like that commercial where there's a dinner party and the woman cooking is talking to her entire dinner party about the meal.

The woman who got cut totally deserved it. Couldn't even really speak at all whenever she was in front of people. And there's another woman who is still in who has gorgeous clothes and shoes, but keeps talking about community outreach and food. WTF?